


Shift

by Berty



Category: due South
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 21:25:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berty/pseuds/Berty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fraser sometimes seems to lead a charmed life. Did you ever stop to wonder why?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shift

**Author's Note:**

> Massive thank you kindlys to Pepe for the beta and help with the final section. May your eye for a detail never dim, my love. This is written with huge affection for secretly_bronte on the felicitous occasion of her birthday.

For a moment you think he's going to leave. He shifts his weight and seems unsettled. His folded arms are a physical barrier; keeping you away, keeping him in, and you don't know how to get around that. So you wait.

His eyes narrow, the tiny lines beside them deeper and more pronounced than you've ever seen them. He chews his lip, sizing you up, deciding whether or not to trust you with this. You've asked the question, but do you really want to know the answer? So you just stand before him like a fool, hopeful but terrified.

At last it seems he's made a decision. With a final, searching look into your eyes, he closes his own and drops his chin to his chest. Turning away from you, his hands fall to his sides and his fists open slowly, palms forward.

His chest rises and falls like yours, breathing calmly, deep and measured, and for the longest time that is all that happens. You strain your senses, holding your breath, waiting for vindication. Then the world shifts, splits, shatters, turns by a fraction of a fraction of a degree and nothing is quite the same.

You're still standing in his apartment, but it's like every perception you've ever had about the place has been wrong. The noon light is more gold than yellow, and your skin seems to prickle everywhere it touches, as if you can feel sunlight. The sounds from outside are louder but incidental, the hum is almost pleasing in its complexity; there are harmonies and rhythms you've never noticed before within the rumble of Chicago. You can smell everything individually instead of the familiar "Ray's apartment" scent you're used to, some things so good they make your mouth water - like his hair and the apples in the bowl on the counter. But others are sour and unpleasant - loneliness, despair, deception.

You're so caught up in the subtleties of what must be his world that you don't notice when his t-shirt disappears. All you see is the shimmer on his skin, his chest, his shoulders, his arms, all exposed to the viscous sunlight, and you know he can feel it too. It glitters on him almost as if it were attracted to him, like he had a gravity of his own that not even light could escape. A singularity of existence.

He raises his arms, not quite straightening them, so it looks like he's asking for something. He lifts his head and opens silver eyes, simultaneously strange and familiar to you. On his back, his skin moves, ripples and sprouts two ridges, which rapidly swell and pulse and change, faster than your eyes can follow. His wings unfurl with a soft thump, disturbing the air and making dust motes dance crazily like ice crystals in a storm wind. And you can feel the instant that a tiny part of your soul is lost to you.

He's sublime - so beautiful you're crying; unexpected, silent tears streaking your cheeks and wetting your lips. The tops of his wings brush the ceiling of his apartment when he flexes them; the pinions skim the floor. They're not white as you think white should be, they're white like the sun sparkling off water, white like mountain snow. You are reminded that white is actually not a colour at all, but light itself - a potential for colour. All colours combined. You have never seen it more eloquently expressed than here in the beauty of his wings.

It seems to you that because nothing could ever be as stunning as he is, the rest of the world stops trying, and is pale and made mute by comparison. You find you can't look away.

"I knew it," you whisper stupidly, your voice sounding odd to your ears. You can taste the sound of it, salty and sweet and your mind reels. Is this how he perceives everything? Is every sound and smell and sight this overload of sensation for him? Because surely, no one could survive the beauty and strangeness of this without it making its mark on their soul.

He smiles slightly, a kindness considering the banality of your words. You recognise his smile, its one he has shared with you a hundred times or more, and to see it transposed onto this ethereal body is peculiarly reassuring.

You lift your fingers in an unconscious desire to understand him. "May I touch you?"

His shoulders go back, and his wings twitch. His expression becomes cautious, but he doesn't step away or tell you no. Slowly you raise your hand and touch your fingertips to his wings. You're shocked to find they're cold, as if he has been outside, flying…

You remember.

Falling.

A pursuit, a scuffle, a shot and a step into nothingness then screaming velocity with the certainty of fleeting pain and then oblivion.

But.

He. Came.

Silently.

You remember the world tumbling away beneath you and his arms about you and the strange, dead scent of air that was too thin and cold to breathe.

To bring you here.

You spread your hands into the feathers, to find that they are not feathers at all, but something else you have no experience of and no word for. And that beneath the cold is warmth. Like a hand through Dief's winter coat to the skin beneath.

You slowly disengage and raise your palm softly to run it down the arc of his right wing. Beneath your hand you feel the strength of the seemingly fragile build. There is a gloss, a sheen to this edge that your skin glides across, with less friction that one might imagine. He closes his eyes as if the sensation of your touch is a pain to him.

"Beautiful," you murmur. "You're so beautiful."

He stands patiently while you learn. You've never thought of yourself as a clumsy person, but the ugliness and ineptitude of your hand against the elegance of his wing looks deeply wrong. You move your fingers toward his back, seeking something more familiar. You brush over where his wings join his shoulder, and he shudders. The transition is so gradual it is hard to see where skin stops and down begins.

"You saved me." More inappropriate words, but you doubt you have it in you to find something more fitting to say. You step closer and his gaze follows you, his neck twisting to watch you touch his shoulder, his chest, his ribs. "Thank you."

He blinks and you see him, Ray, your Ray, behind the gloriousness. You see the connection you share, you see his humanity beneath the veneer of the immortal and you see that it troubles him. You wonder at that. Why should he be afraid of that? What aspect of mortality could hold a danger for him?

Boldly you hold his gaze until he lowers his eyes and turns his face forward again, the mask of impassivity shutting him away once more. It's a tactic you know well and one you employ to similar effect.

So you lean in and touch his cold cheek, forcing the issue, acknowledging the connection and accepting the consequences. You feel the tingle of the light condense in your fingertips. It's a sensation you've felt before. Another memory breaks loose and floats to the surface of your consciousness.

You've touched him like this before.

You know this intimacy.

You still as you struggle to remember when you have shared such a moment as this, and you're surprised to realise that it's more than once. You have no concept of chronology, it feels like a single, seamless narrative, and that you have always known that he was this other entity. But how can you have? How can you have possibly functioned knowing that such a thing as him existed?

That is when you see the tear slip from his eye and slide, slowly, down his face, sparkling and solitary.

"You make me forget."

He keeps his face averted as his answer arrives in your mind - you see now that he's been answering you all along, his words filling in the gaps where your vocabulary fails you.

His hand reaches for yours and he twines your fingers together. The electric tingle of his touch warms you and resonates through you to your very bones. There is such tenderness in the gesture, and such regret in his eyes as he turns to face you.

You can smell it as his wing curves around you, enfolding you in the scent of cold air and cinnamon and crushed grass and open water. You don't need it to touch you to know it is there - much stronger than it looks for a thing made of light and faith.

Drowsiness pulls you, like the sunlight has entered your veins and is filling you with its slow, warm, insidious gold. You can't fight it. You don't even know if you want to.

You stare into his face, the tear diamond bright on his cheek. "I love you," you murmur and, for a second, for a brilliant heartbeat, his eyes are grey and blue, not silver. His eyes. Ray's eyes.

"I know," he whispers.

With a last effort you lean in and touch your mouth to his, and you're falling again. But slowly. So slowly. Tumbling like thistledown.

(\o/) (\o/) (\o/)

"Fraser!"

"Yes!" I jerk up my head so sharply that I feel something pop in my neck.

"Are you sure you didn't hit your head, earlier?"

I blink stupidly at him as I reorient myself. We're in his apartment, side by side on his couch. The closing credits of On The Fly are flickering on the television, casting insane colours over his face in the darkened room. He's looking at me with eyebrows drawn down, his head cocked to one side, just seconds from reaching out to check my head for signs of swelling.

"Of course not, Ray. I'm perfectly fine."

"You sure? You're pretty gone over there."

"I'm just a little fatigued," I say, with an unsettling feeling of it being a scripted response. Am I so predictable that I've begun to bore myself?

"Yeah, I hear ya. That was quite a day, right?"

I nod and smile at the triumphant grin on his face. We did good work today and despite my slight stumble on the roof of the warehouse, we were instrumental in shutting down the Chicago operation of an international cartel of cocaine distributors.

"Cleaning up Chicago, one bad guy at a time," he says with a twist of his lips that makes me stare until I shake myself enough to respond.

"The longest journey begins with a single step, Ray."

"C'mon, Fraser," he says, slapping my shoulder as he heaves himself off the couch. "You're gonna turn into a pumpkin soon. I'll give you a ride home."

I'm shocked to see that he's right and it's past eleven pm. "I'm happy to walk," I protest weakly as Dief comes out of the kitchen, stretching, yawning and shaking. It seems that I'm not the only one who finds Ray's home to be a most relaxing venue.

"Nah, c'mon. Need you to be in top shape tomorrow, buddy. Paperwork!" He holds out a hand and pulls me up.

"That's very kind of you," I murmur with a small smile at his witticism.

"Yeah, I know. What would you do without me, right?" he quips, and he passes me my hat.

He has no idea. No idea at all.

Fin


End file.
